Various medical procedures involve the use of medical devices that are joined together. For example, certain medical procedures involve the attachment of devices to the end of an endoscope or the like.
One example of a medical procedure that can involve the use of an endoscope is a ligation procedure. Ligation is a medical procedure whereby a physician ties off or mechanically constricts a piece of body tissue with a ligature such as a suture, clip or band. In certain procedures, the purpose of ligation may be to impede or obstruct the flow of blood, fluids and/or other bodily materials through the tissue. For example, a physician can remove target tissue by ligating it to obstruct circulation through the target tissue, thereby causing the tissue to die and slough off. The purpose of ligation may also be to hold tissue to be cauterized or resected, as in an endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) procedure.
For ligating tissue inside a body cavity, orifice or lumen, physicians often use an endoscope to access the target tissue and ligate it. In one such form of endoscopic ligation, the physician attaches a ligation banding cap to the end of an endoscope. One or a plurality of ligation bands are stretched around the ligation banding cap and can be deployed by the physician. The physician uses the endoscope to position each stretched ligation band over the target tissue and then releases the band onto the tissue so that the band contracts and catches the tissue. The inward pressure of the ligation band constricts the target tissue.
Ligating instruments have been the subject of a number of patents and patent applications, including U.S. Pat. No. 5,259,366 to Reydel, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,789 to Chin, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,356,416 to Chu, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,398,844 to Zaslavsky, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,853,416 to Tolkoff; U.S. Pat. No. 5,857,585 to Tolkoff, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,913,865 to Fortier, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,968,056 to Chu, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,235,040 to Chu, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. RE 36,629 to Zaslavsky, et al., and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0091218 to Richardson. The disclosures of these prior U.S. patents and patent application are expressly incorporated herein by reference.
In certain previous ligating instruments, the ligation banding cap is designed for use with endoscopes of a particular size. The ligation banding cap assembly includes an adapter for fitting on the end of the endoscope. Generally, however, such prior ligation banding cap assemblies were not suitable for fitting on a wide range of endoscope sizes.
There remains a need for improving the attachment together of medical devices. In some instances, prior means for joining medical devices together has had the potential to lead to problems such as misalignment, instability, jarring, inadequate sealing, poor suction, poor visualization, separation of parts and/or other issues arising from a poor connection. The potential for these problems is exacerbated when parts of different sizes are joined together. There remains a need for facilitating the joining of different-sized parts together while avoiding or minimizing these potential problems.